Google Shuts Down Cryptocurrency Mining Through Browser Extensions

Google announced on Monday that it is taking action against cryptocurrency mining extensions designed for its Chrome browser.

The internet and tech giant made the recent announcement revealing plans to institute a ban against chrome extensions for mining cryptocurrency. The ban will take effect in July this year, but it will only affect extensions designated for mining digital coins. This means that other extensions that are related to blockchain will remain operational. The decision highlights a reversal of the company’s previous decision to allow mining extensions on the Chrome browser provided they were strictly designated for mining and notified users about their purpose. Unfortunately, that was not enough to keep away rogue extensions that did not comply with the requirements.

In one of its recent statements, Google stated that roughly 90 percent of all the crypto mining extensions have fallen short of the policy requirements thus the decision to eliminate them completely. According to a Chrome-related forum called Chromium Projects, Google has been making changes to the Chrome source code. These changes are a direct indicator that Chrome developers have been worried about the extensions since the fall of 2017.

There have also been reports about Chrome extensions stealing user information or such add-ons being used to mine cryptocurrencies for third parties. These complaints are similar to complaints about crypto-based applications on the Google Play Store. Most of the people that have downloaded such apps have complained about their data being stolen or even their money being stolen. Meanwhile, there have also been concerns about the prevalence of mining malware that can be installed remotely and used to mine cryptocurrency without the consent of the device owners. Such malware is a huge threat especially because they highjack the computing power and cause the target computer to be slow when handling regular computing functions.

There are still concerns that Google’s decision to ban crypto mining extensions on its Chrome browser will not be enough. This is because hackers and malicious developers have been coming up with new ways of embedding or hiding malicious extensions that have crypto mining scripts. However, Google’s decision to ban coin mining extensions may be the first of many steps that the company will employ in the future to counter the problem, thus marking a positive step forward. Malicious cryptocurrency mining has increasingly become more prevalent and has been affecting more of the major companies. In February it was reported that Tesla's cloud had been compromised by mining software.